Quoted from Dent00:It is obvious from the comments in this tiltforums thread above that some players are taking advantage of the fact that some rules are hidden from the average player.
Some seem to take great pride in the fact that they have done that background research already, which other players may or may not be aware of.
Some people are even drawn to a particular machine in order to discover the rules, which then, gives them a perceived advantage over others that have not done that research.
So, how does that relate to a brand new kid playing a pinball machine for the first time that has no idea how to use the flipper buttons or what the action button does?
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. After playing my home EM exclusively for a few weeks, I played a new game at a bar. What kind of struck me was how much EASIER the new game was than the EM. Until I realized that it wasn't.
My old EM is brutal. You stand at the game and you can figure out what you need to do right away, but doing it is hard. I feel like I've made a ton of progress by not draining just slightly more than people coming by to play.
I think that new machines have figured out a good way to make games fun for a variety of players by having deep rule sets. A new player doesn't notice how complex a new pinball machine is. They put in a quarter, randomly start shooting the balls off, and they start seeing a lot of combos go off and hit ramps without much difficulty and walk away to tell their friends how good they are at it.
A person who plays a lot of pinball knows that what the casual player is seeing isn't REALLY the good combos and high scores, and gets to grinding to pick them out. And there is a lot there for them to find that the casual player would never even know about. (Which is all pretty identical to the speedrunning communities.)
I actually think it's pretty brilliant on new game designers. They've managed to make games that appeal to a lot of different skill levels.
If there is an area that pinball games can work on, it's the intermediate players, who start to realize there's more to the game, but don't have a clear idea on how to progress. But in today's day and age of the internet guide and youtube videos, it doesn't seem like nearly as large of a chasm anymore.